Creation, the Physical and the Spiritual

Adapted from a devotion for the WELCA Cluster Gathering at Red River Lutheran Church

Saturday, September 29, 2012

1 Corinthians 15:42-49

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. ⁴³It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. ⁴⁴It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. ⁴⁷The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Martin Luther loved to talk about the Old Adam--that sinful hanger-on in our lives in this world. This was how he talked about the already-but-not-yet nature of our redemption. It is also an introduction into his idea that we are simultaneously sinner and saint. The Old Adam is our sinful self; the new creation is the side of us drowned in the waters of baptism and raised a new creation. As Luther wrote in the Large Catechism, "These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam, and after that the resurrection of the new man."

This is another way to talk about our dualism as creatures both physical and spiritual. However, the language of physical and spiritual is largely misunderstood in our world. The passage above from 1 Corinthians resonates with the modern understanding of the separation of body and spirit (or soul). It's fairly common to think about the body as bad and the spirit as good; that the body is the corrupted part of us that awaits its spiritual redemption when our physical life is over. However, this is a misguided understanding of the whole of the biblical picture, and I believe it is a profound misreading of 1 Corinthians. We are indelibly both: physical and spiritual; bodies and spirits; sinners and saints. I turn to Wendell Berry: 

"I would like to purge my own mind and language of such terms as ‘spiritual,’ ‘physical,’ ‘metaphysical,’ and ‘transcendental’—all of which imply that Creation is divided into ‘levels’ that can readily be peeled apart and judged by human beings. I believe that the Creation is one continuous fabric comprehending simultaneously what we mean by ‘spirit’ and what we mean by ‘matter.’” (“Health is Membership,” 1994).

We have this problem since the fall from Garden of Eden. We think very poorly of our bodies in large part because we think of them as vessels of pleasure whose usefulness will wear out over time. Moreover we consider the pleasure itself to be a sign of sin, and we act as if the only way to control our brokenness is to subdue our physical to the spiritual. This is a hollow dualism. To disconnect our physical selves from our spiritual selves is to perform a lobotomy on our souls.

As Christians we proclaim a bodily resurrection—these bodies but changed. The ultimate physical nature of things will be revealed when the spiritual and the physical are understood as one; only then will the Old Adam dissipate in the face of our true physical/spiritual nature. Our bodies will be demonstrated, finally, to be both spiritual and physical; not one, not the other. This is counter-cultural but it is at the heart of the scriptural witness to resurrection. Matthew Dickerson writes:

"The biblical Christian account of eternal life does not correspond to the popular image of disembodied spirits hovering on clouds. Rather, the Christian idea of eternal life is once again that of embodiment: a life of both body and spirit. The body is important.

Put another way, Christian teaching about the death of the mortal body does not promise that the soul will go to heaven. Rather, the Christian hope given in the Bible is that heaven will come to earth, and the individual will be given a new body—or, perhaps, will be resurrected in a new body. That is, both the created earth and our bodies will be renewed or restored.” (The Mind and the Machine, Brazos Press, 2011)

Shoshone Base Camp--Prichard, Idaho, 2005

We do ourselves a disservice when we divide ourselves into separate natures. We are not souls trapped in bodies. The body isn't sin and the spirit divine. We are one fabric, as Wendell Berry wrote; in fact, all of creation is one fabric. Paul tells us in his letter to the church at Rome that "the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:22-23). Dualism does not mean that we are separate parts but in fact that we are wholly one in Christ, redeemed in every facet of our being. Our distinctions between the physical and the spiritual are finally just perceptions of a reality beyond our grasp.

Paul himself seems only to see this in part--his words in 1 Corinthians crash into the words from Romans--so I think we're excused for still wrestling with the implications today. But don't be confused, this is imminently important for how we live. The spiritual and the physical have never been more dissected and separated in any time in history than they are today. I believe we have a calling to point out this divorce and to reclaim our wholeness.

This is neither the start nor the finish, but it's a piece of the puzzle.